ABSTRACT
In Heidelberg Germany, notes from my visit to Hans George Gadamer. He was somewhat crippled and balancing poorly at the age of 92 years but he was not senile, a very strange fellow with a mystical streak. One wonders what living through the Nazi era did to him. Like Heidegger, he wonders if the world will somehow change track but does not, like Heidegger, think that would take a god. Although he did not agree with the later mysticism of Heidegger, he described himself as a visionary weaving an ambiguous quest about which prejudices do and which do not make sense. As a sophomore medical student in 1952 at the University of Chicago, he was allowed one elective course, on the assumption that medical students would choose among the biological sciences. But he chose to take the course on Whitehead’s masterpiece, Process and Reality, given by the distinguished Professor Charles Hartshorne in the philosophy department.
